Should the Bush administration adopt the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group?

Why is President Bush distancing himself from the Iraq Study Group? To push his standard agenda and get a military victory in Iraq within his term. He has had his chance on this path and failed. His interest is about saving face for himself. He has damaged America enough. The Iraq Study Group ideas should be taken seriously by Bush.

Anita Miller

Wilmette

I believe it is unrealistic for the American people and the media to expect the president to formulate a policy response to the Iraq report in one or two weeks, as the media seem to expect.

The panel had months to prepare a report that appears to be nothing more than a compilation of thoughts aired by self-appointed experts. We don't need a rush to judgment just because the speed of communications these days seems to require an immediate response to 79 not-very-well-thought-out recommendations.

Ed Maksym Jr.

Albany, Wis.

Make an allowance for 79 recommendations and any problem in the world can be solved: world hunger, poverty, energy, war, disease, etc. Easy! Oil supply and prices? Fuggedaboudit! Problem solved with recommendation No. 44 . . .

Oh, by the way, just how practical do the aforesaid "solutions" have to be?

Walt Kilmanas

West Dundee

The report is seriously flawed. Recommending that the U.S. enter into a dialog with Syria and Iran regarding Iraq without adequately considering the opinions of the Arab Gulf States is a significant oversight and weakens the credibility of the entire report.

Phil Adams

Lincolnshire

As in Vietnam, we are failing to deal with reality. In Vietnam, we thought of the war as a civil war, North against South. The Vietnamese perceived the war as a war of liberation, and simply wanted us to leave. There is no such country as Iraq. It is three countries cobbled into one. We are uniformly failing to understand this reality; that is why we continue to fail.

Joe Garry

Riverside

W's administration (let's not give him all the credit) has created such a debacle in the Middle East that it will take decades for our country as a whole to recover credibility and respect the world over. If the bipartisan consensus is that we must send more troops to Iraq in order to be able to actually pull out of there and let the Iraqis run their own country in the foreseeable future, that's what should be done. Our soldiers should stop having to pay the price for the irresponsible decisions of an incompetent administration.